1. Field of the Invention
The present invention is an alternative to incarceration and an inexpensive device for humanely penalizing criminal offenders. Following the burgeoning home detention philosophy for principally non-violent criminal offenders, this device will permit effective punishment of offenders while easing jail overcrowding.
2. Description of Related Art
In 1990, there were reported to be nearly one million prisoners housed in Federal, State, and local institutions. By 2005, it is expected that two million prisoners will jam an already overcrowded system. This crisis in overcrowding has forced courts to release prisoners long before sentences have been served, often simply dumping offenders back into the streets for lack of appropriate alternate programs. Parole and probation departments are swamped and readily acknowledge their growing ineffectiveness in carrying out adequate supervision. The ambiguity of the current system and the uncertainty of punishment has without a doubt contributed to the startling recidivism rates.
Recently legislated sentencing reforms reflect more severe attitudes that seek to reduce disparity and uncertainty. However, taxpayers have recoiled at the tremendous, per prisoner, costs involved in funding sufficient facilities and traditional supervisory systems. The courts are faced with a paradox in which, on one hand, the public is clamoring for stiffer, more absolute penalties, but, on the other, appropriate programs to satisfy that mandate do not exist. To date, the answer has too often been the selling of an illusion - stiff sentences, but early releases. An armed robber is sentenced to twenty years in prison and then quietly released after serving nine months, relegated to a state of what in reality is unsupervised parole. Illegal drug dealers and users are diverted into rehabilitative programs in lieu of jail time, programs in which they have no interest or motivation to successfully complete. For lack of jail space, convicted drunk drivers repeatedly pay a fine, continuing to purchase liquor and drive even after several arrests; and in spite of being suspended and without insurance.
It is imperative that a system of penalties be provided that is consistent and predictable, providing sanctions congruent with the concept of "just deserts." The criminal justice system has utilized, even experimented with, various forms of non-incarceration punishment/rehabilitation. The most widely used is, of course, parole and probation, the limitations of which were previously noted. Another, increasingly used technique is electronic home monitoring which, given the proper candidate and circumstances, has proven successful. There is, however, a growing backlash that EHM is too "user friendly," that it may well enable the monitoring of an offender's daily activities, but it does not incorporate sufficient restriction of activities or necessary social ostracism to be considered adequate measures for many offenses.
With the exception of the proposed device, no penalty device is known which is relatively humane, difficult to remove without detection, limiting in the sense that wearers would be readily identifiable and subjected to appropriate allied social ostracism and requital, but still allow a degree of freedom to move about in society, while at the same time identifying them as an alcohol or drug abuser, someone who should not be associating with children, or someone who is in a rehabilitative status that needs continuous monitoring.